Still using so many words to prove I understand that you cannot be sure that you exist?

In which case, I guess I have to dispense myself from exchanging ideas with you about how humans prove that something exists in reality outside of our mind.

You see, everyone, first we are certain that we exist and also everything that we have as parts of our existence, like the nose in our face.

Then we will proceed to work together to ascertain how we can also prove the existence of things which are not part and parcel of our say, body.

Is that all right with everyone?

We cannot proceed to the next agenda unless you are certain that you exist and also every part of you exists like say, the nose in your face and the bead err I mean head on your shoulders.

Forgive me, as I said, if you find my writing here annoying, tell me in a few words why, I will revise it so that you will not complain anymore.

I find myself to be offending people who are not happy with me because according to them I am into funny condescension on them.

What I try to do is to influence folks so that they have their feet always on firm earth, and not into so many words, when one touch of the nose is enough to arrive at certainty of existence of our selves and our body parts, may I, like the nose in our face.

Dear readers, sooner than later, some people here will complain that they can't understand my English, in which case I suggest they bring my posts to the local grade school teacher of English grammar and writing, and ask her or him whether (s)he can make head and tail of my English.

So, everyone, as soon as we have come to agreement that we have certainty of the existence of our selves and our noses, then we will work together to come to master the proof or the skill to prove the existence of things which we cannot get in contact with by touching.

I almost forgot, about how we prove the certainty of our nose by touching it, there are a very exiguous few humans who cannot be sure that they have a nose, that is a sickness; and if the sickness is so grievous, then society will have to confine them in safety asylum: because they are of no worthwhile interactive relationship with the rest of society, and also for their own health and survival.

Now, dear folks here who are not sick like the above described exiguous minority, let not you take the plunge of drawing the overwhelming faulty conclusion, that therefore man cannot be certain that he exists in actual reality, from by just touching for example his nose -- unless you want to imagine that you are such most abysmal philosophers of a certain un-falsifiable school of insane thinking or more correctly, vanity imagination.

The method for proving the existence of something which we are not directly aware through the senses is called logic. It is the art or skill of non-contradictory identification. It works with facts which are discovered and validated first by the senses and then later by a process of induction and deduction. What more do you need?

Do not lose your knowledge that man's proper estate is an upright posture, an intransigent mind and a step that travels unlimited roads. - Ayn Rand.

Don't sacrifice for me, live for yourself! - Me

The only alternative to Objectivism is some form of Subjectivism. - Dawson Bethrick

RE: Let us work together to concur on how to prove that something exists.

(17-12-2015 08:35 PM)Pachomius Wrote: You and I exist, and we are certain about that, and our nose also.

I know that I exist and that my nose exists. Yes, I can touch my nose. You, I am less certain of. Nothing personal, just that we are communicating via internet. Consequently, I have no solid evidence that you are not suffering a tragic birth defect or accident that left you noseless. Similarly, you could be the product of a rougue search engine that has achieved sentience and has no corporeal existence as we understand the term.

I will give you the benefit of the doubt though. The statement " I exist and have a nose." comes with such a trivial burden of proof that I would be more skeptical if you claimed anything to the contrary.

(17-12-2015 08:35 PM)Pachomius Wrote: So, everyone, as soon as we have come to agreement that we have certainty of the existence of our selves and our noses, then we will work together to come to master the proof or the skill to prove the existence of things which we cannot get in contact with by touching.

I think I can see where this is going as plain as the nose on my face.

There are a great many things that I cannot touch but that I can experience with my other senses. I cannot touch the sun, nor would I wish to given the opportunity. I can perceive its warmth on my face nonetheless, even with 150 million km oof vacuum between us.

There are even more things that I cannot perceive directly with any of my senses but that can be observed using any of a variety of fascinating devices. I cannot perceive the Earth's core or the surace of Venus yet seimsographs will show me the former and radar imagery the latter.

Then there is the set of things that I cannot perceive or detect in any manner but whose existence I can infer based on the behavior of objects that can be perceived. The massive black hole that lurks at the center of our galaxy cannot be seen but nothing else could bend the orbits of the surrounding starts and not be blindingly visible.

Lastly there are the abstracts, the things which truly have no physical existence but are as necessary to our existence as food or water. Love, religion, language, even reason itself. None of these exist as physical entities but I can evaluate their existence and effects by observing how they change my behavior and the behavior of my fellow humans. On the one hand, money does not actually exist. A hundred dollar bill has no more inherent worth than a one dollar bill. On the other hand, it doesn't take much genius to understand why a representtive currency is handy for anybody who doesn't want to haul a cartload of carrots and pigs around everywhere.

And now that I have listed a variety of different categories of things that may be experienced and known to geater or lesser certainties, would you kindly get to the point. Unless I am very much mistaken it fits into none of the categories listed above.

---

Flesh and blood of a dead star, slain in the apocalypse of supernova, resurrected by four billion years of continuous autocatalytic reaction and crowned with the emergent property of sentience in the dream that the universe might one day understand itself.

Flesh and blood of a dead star, slain in the apocalypse of supernova, resurrected by four billion years of continuous autocatalytic reaction and crowned with the emergent property of sentience in the dream that the universe might one day understand itself.

Still using so many words to prove I understand that you cannot be sure that you exist?

In which case, I guess I have to dispense myself from exchanging ideas with you about how humans prove that something exists in reality outside of our mind.

You see, everyone, first we are certain that we exist and also everything that we have as parts of our existence, like the nose in our face.

Then we will proceed to work together to ascertain how we can also prove the existence of things which are not part and parcel of our say, body.

Is that all right with everyone?

We cannot proceed to the next agenda unless you are certain that you exist and also every part of you exists like say, the nose in your face and the bead err I mean head on your shoulders.

Forgive me, as I said, if you find my writing here annoying, tell me in a few words why, I will revise it so that you will not complain anymore.

I find myself to be offending people who are not happy with me because according to them I am into funny condescension on them.

What I try to do is to influence folks so that they have their feet always on firm earth, and not into so many words, when one touch of the nose is enough to arrive at certainty of existence of our selves and our body parts, may I, like the nose in our face.

Dear readers, sooner than later, some people here will complain that they can't understand my English, in which case I suggest they bring my posts to the local grade school teacher of English grammar and writing, and ask her or him whether (s)he can make head and tail of my English.

So, everyone, as soon as we have come to agreement that we have certainty of the existence of our selves and our noses, then we will work together to come to master the proof or the skill to prove the existence of things which we cannot get in contact with by touching.

I almost forgot, about how we prove the certainty of our nose by touching it, there are a very exiguous few humans who cannot be sure that they have a nose, that is a sickness; and if the sickness is so grievous, then society will have to confine them in safety asylum: because they are of no worthwhile interactive relationship with the rest of society, and also for their own health and survival.

Now, dear folks here who are not sick like the above described exiguous minority, let not you take the plunge of drawing the overwhelming faulty conclusion, that therefore man cannot be certain that he exists in actual reality, from by just touching for example his nose -- unless you want to imagine that you are such most abysmal philosophers of a certain un-falsifiable school of insane thinking or more correctly, vanity imagination.

I was not entirely clear before.

I was not arguing with whether we have noses. I agree that we do. (Well, most of us do. Injuries, as I mentioned.) While I will not express absolute certainty on the subject, I will express such a high degree of certainty (in a gut, Bayesian-probability sense) that the odds of my being wrong on the subject are worse than one in a million -- perhaps far, far worse -- so that the distinction is rather academic. I will also grant a similar degree of certainty for the other parts of my body.

I do, however, take issue with your method of verification. While touching something is good, solid sensory evidence, it's far from completely reliable. Even leaving aside the brain-in-a-vat style scenario, it's far from completely reliable. I have had vivid dreams in which I saw and touched things that were nothing more than figments of my unconscious imagination. Amputees can still "feel" a phantom limb where the old one was. And I don't even want to guess what tactile sensations hallucinogens can generate. Since it is possible to have a tactile sensation of something being there even when that something doesn't actually exist, touch cannot be absolute proof of something's existence. By and large, yes, touching things is a good way to verify they exist, and provides strong evidence, but it's not reliable enough to form an axiomatic, absolute basis of epistemology.

I am an antipistevist. That's like an antipastovist, only with epistemic responsibility instead of bruschetta.